Journal Entry One
So, my counsellor says that I should spend half an hour a night stopping and thinking about things, or having 'me' time that doesn't involve distracting myself from my life.
I now weigh more than when I started this journal, due to a combination of two things. Firstly, my new anti-depressant causes weight gain. Secondly, a knee injury is reducing my mobility. I'm unhappy about both of these. For the second, I am seeing a physiotherapist regularly. For the first, well I really can't do anything about it. I had to take almost a month off work to change onto this tablet, because the old one stopped working properly. My options then are to stick with this one and be fat or be unemployed - because I certainly can't take any more time off work to change medication because of weight gain.
I'm struggling to regulate my input because the medication makes me feel more hungry, as well as seeming to increase the effect of any calories consumed. I'm also still depressed and anxious enough to have trouble organising meals and food shopping. Basically I'm just well enough to stay employed, without any energy left over for much else.
I'm looking for another, slightly less stressful job, but I'm being discriminated against for internal vacancies because of the department I currently work in, and my current pay grade. The pay grades are arranged in 'bands' - Band A being the lowest. I'm a Band A, but my quarterly bonuses take me to at least a Band B grade. Yet when I apply for Band B jobs, people see it as trying to upgrade my job. I'm honestly considering putting Band B on my application form and explaining the difference later. As for my department, well one hiring manager basically told me that they wont look at people from my department, completely ignoring any previous job experience I might have had before I had this job.
So far, so shitty. I've had to apply for Band A jobs that don't have the same bonus in a bid to get out of my department, basically taking a pay cut I really can't afford to take, as an alternative to getting more and more depressed and losing my job entirely by being off work ill again. I haven't heard back from that application yet, and if I don't get that job I don't know what I'll do.
I'm currently single, and while this isn't a problem in and of itself (the relationship needed to be ended and I ended it), it means I have to deal (or not) with everything myself. My friends are supportive, but none of them live in my county, some of them don't even live in this country, so there's a limit to what they can do, and it's not the same as having a partner.
I use distraction tactics to stop the walls of the world closing in on me. I had a particularly bad day at work today, with some very unpleasant, aggressive customers, so when I got home I played Dragon Age on the computer for about four and a half hours. It helps to pretend to be someone else - an elf rogue with a destiny, quests that have set parameters to complete them, a simple world-view of killing evil creatures and saving the world. Ambitious I'll grant you, but it's a game, so it's made to be achievable.
I also do a lot of reading. Fantasy, science-fiction, fanfic for the TV shows and films I like, I've read an awful lot of it. Sometimes I watch loads of a show I have on DVD, like Last Airbender, Buffy, Medium, Due South. Same as the computer games, immerse myself in another world, be another person.
The problem is, it only lasts until you stop reading, watching, or playing, then you're back to your own crappy life with stuff in the kitchen that needs cleaning and clothes than need washing and you just haven't got the energy to care. You do the minimum, make sure things aren't mouldy, brush the crumbs off a plate and wash it as you need it, do a batch of underpants every week - the bare minimum, because that's all you can manage and some days you can't even manage that. So you play more games, read more books, watch more TV shows.
This is why I'm supposed to take half an hour out to not do anything, to think about things, but the reason I don't stop, and I don't think about things like this, is that if I do I'm worried I'll just cavein. It'll all be too much, and I just wont get out of bed in the morning. I'm getting tearful writing this.
I only have the usual problems that most people have, I have Asperger's but other than that nothing special, but it's like other people are sturdy houses, with good foundations and strong walls and support beams, and I'm a lean-to under a highway bridge. It rains on them and it rolls off. It rains on me and I rust. I don't know how to be stronger. I know how to fight a darkspawn horde, how to battle a dragon, how to solve crimes and meet alien species, but I don't know how to summon the energy to keep on top of my housework and I seem incapable (or unworthy) of getting a better job.
For my age, I'm employed in a low-paid thankless job where even people in my own company look down on my department, despite the fact it's a damn sight harder than what some of them have to deal with. I live in a house with a mortgage in a slightly rough area (and I only got that because I inherited money from my grandmother to buy it), which needs repairs that I'll have to borrow money from my parents for, which at 28 is frankly embarrassing. I have friends from work, not close ones, but they've all moved on to better departments or other companies, and I'm still here. My close friends, socially speaking, are geographically speaking anything but.
If I did decide to kill myself, or just to stop - stop sleeping, stop eating, stop living - the only creatures that would notice would be my gerbils and my fish, because they would go hungry. I can't see anyone from work actually coming to my house, my parents also live a distance away. I'd give it at least a month before anyone tried to check up on me.
So there you go, counsellor, that was my half hour. I don't feel better, I can't see any way around my problems, and I'm about to cry. If it's all the same to you, I'll just stick to spending the waking hours not at work playing computer games, until my mind finally cracks and I can convince myself I am actually an elf mage and retire from real life altogether.
I now weigh more than when I started this journal, due to a combination of two things. Firstly, my new anti-depressant causes weight gain. Secondly, a knee injury is reducing my mobility. I'm unhappy about both of these. For the second, I am seeing a physiotherapist regularly. For the first, well I really can't do anything about it. I had to take almost a month off work to change onto this tablet, because the old one stopped working properly. My options then are to stick with this one and be fat or be unemployed - because I certainly can't take any more time off work to change medication because of weight gain.
I'm struggling to regulate my input because the medication makes me feel more hungry, as well as seeming to increase the effect of any calories consumed. I'm also still depressed and anxious enough to have trouble organising meals and food shopping. Basically I'm just well enough to stay employed, without any energy left over for much else.
I'm looking for another, slightly less stressful job, but I'm being discriminated against for internal vacancies because of the department I currently work in, and my current pay grade. The pay grades are arranged in 'bands' - Band A being the lowest. I'm a Band A, but my quarterly bonuses take me to at least a Band B grade. Yet when I apply for Band B jobs, people see it as trying to upgrade my job. I'm honestly considering putting Band B on my application form and explaining the difference later. As for my department, well one hiring manager basically told me that they wont look at people from my department, completely ignoring any previous job experience I might have had before I had this job.
So far, so shitty. I've had to apply for Band A jobs that don't have the same bonus in a bid to get out of my department, basically taking a pay cut I really can't afford to take, as an alternative to getting more and more depressed and losing my job entirely by being off work ill again. I haven't heard back from that application yet, and if I don't get that job I don't know what I'll do.
I'm currently single, and while this isn't a problem in and of itself (the relationship needed to be ended and I ended it), it means I have to deal (or not) with everything myself. My friends are supportive, but none of them live in my county, some of them don't even live in this country, so there's a limit to what they can do, and it's not the same as having a partner.
I use distraction tactics to stop the walls of the world closing in on me. I had a particularly bad day at work today, with some very unpleasant, aggressive customers, so when I got home I played Dragon Age on the computer for about four and a half hours. It helps to pretend to be someone else - an elf rogue with a destiny, quests that have set parameters to complete them, a simple world-view of killing evil creatures and saving the world. Ambitious I'll grant you, but it's a game, so it's made to be achievable.
I also do a lot of reading. Fantasy, science-fiction, fanfic for the TV shows and films I like, I've read an awful lot of it. Sometimes I watch loads of a show I have on DVD, like Last Airbender, Buffy, Medium, Due South. Same as the computer games, immerse myself in another world, be another person.
The problem is, it only lasts until you stop reading, watching, or playing, then you're back to your own crappy life with stuff in the kitchen that needs cleaning and clothes than need washing and you just haven't got the energy to care. You do the minimum, make sure things aren't mouldy, brush the crumbs off a plate and wash it as you need it, do a batch of underpants every week - the bare minimum, because that's all you can manage and some days you can't even manage that. So you play more games, read more books, watch more TV shows.
This is why I'm supposed to take half an hour out to not do anything, to think about things, but the reason I don't stop, and I don't think about things like this, is that if I do I'm worried I'll just cavein. It'll all be too much, and I just wont get out of bed in the morning. I'm getting tearful writing this.
I only have the usual problems that most people have, I have Asperger's but other than that nothing special, but it's like other people are sturdy houses, with good foundations and strong walls and support beams, and I'm a lean-to under a highway bridge. It rains on them and it rolls off. It rains on me and I rust. I don't know how to be stronger. I know how to fight a darkspawn horde, how to battle a dragon, how to solve crimes and meet alien species, but I don't know how to summon the energy to keep on top of my housework and I seem incapable (or unworthy) of getting a better job.
For my age, I'm employed in a low-paid thankless job where even people in my own company look down on my department, despite the fact it's a damn sight harder than what some of them have to deal with. I live in a house with a mortgage in a slightly rough area (and I only got that because I inherited money from my grandmother to buy it), which needs repairs that I'll have to borrow money from my parents for, which at 28 is frankly embarrassing. I have friends from work, not close ones, but they've all moved on to better departments or other companies, and I'm still here. My close friends, socially speaking, are geographically speaking anything but.
If I did decide to kill myself, or just to stop - stop sleeping, stop eating, stop living - the only creatures that would notice would be my gerbils and my fish, because they would go hungry. I can't see anyone from work actually coming to my house, my parents also live a distance away. I'd give it at least a month before anyone tried to check up on me.
So there you go, counsellor, that was my half hour. I don't feel better, I can't see any way around my problems, and I'm about to cry. If it's all the same to you, I'll just stick to spending the waking hours not at work playing computer games, until my mind finally cracks and I can convince myself I am actually an elf mage and retire from real life altogether.